to all yet to risk, i say, yes.

Prospective Immigrants Please Note


Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.


- Adrienne Rich

Why I had to face the dragon.

I thought of it this morning as I geared up to mount my faithful steed sojourner truth. I thought of it as I rode home from lea b's art show in the dark. I thought of it yesterday morning and the evening before that. I thought of it as I rode, eyeing the hypnotic white line at the avenue's edge block after block for miles. I've been troubled by a vision these last few days and nights, and I knew I had to find it today.

I was riding so very purposefully Monday, on my way to work, and making good time when it sailed by in my peripheral. I hadn't been sure I'd seen it correctly and turned that quick second to look. Sure enough it was there in the fast fading distance, lying straight as an arrow in the gutter, like the treasure of a once and future king.

"Where did it come from?" I wondered as I pressed forward. I had already suppressed the instinct to turn around and rescue it, and already doubted my decision. It didn't take me long to piece together a theory, a quarter mile up the road laid a fallen action figure, and further, a broken fire truck…no doubt, some child's dreams dropped unseen by a moving truck…lost without notice along the way.

But it was the sword that haunted me. Buzz Lightyears are familiar. Toy fire trucks, non-descript. But there was so much soul and handiwork poured into crafting this child's vision. The straight reed of a palm frond dragged around no doubt to approximate a tip…a crossguard and pommel of paper and clumsy tape at the hilt. I knew I had to find it again. It was too significant a loss to allow the wind and rain and traffic to claim it to oblivion.

I rode that night and again the next morning…another evening and later…a night again looking for it…imagining some child knight lost and heartbroken in some strange and foreign new home castle. I awoke again this morning thinking of it, and rode, more slowly this time, scanning the long, white line of the gutter and taking inventory of my surroundings with each new mile.

And as I trudged on…there it was! Somebody had no doubt, thrown it toward the bushes, and there it lay on its side…waiting…with resplendent intent. I had to brake hard to stop. Dismounting, I considered the coming traffic, how far I would have to run back to retrieve it, and pulled my steed to the side for safety.

In an instant, my adult world of work commute faded, and I knew this seeming crazy quest was infinitely important. It was that split second when I also heard the dragon. I moved forward, hearing my road shoes crunch against the still dew-wet morning grass. Such ferociousness! Unseen, a large and angry dog informed me of how long his teeth were, and how much he'd like me to feel them pierce my flesh.

We were making a scene. Me, errant proxy for the destitute child-knight, and this dragon of a howling dog, snarling and screaming from the bushes. I made sure the fence was high as his guttural barking grew louder and more desperate. Having reached the sword then that lay just beyond his reach, I wheeled around and thrust it victoriously into the air.

It was a ridiculous sight as I rode past mothers dutifully delivering their little ones to school…principal and crossing guards, drinking coffee…and other adults making their way by me in cars on the way to work. There I was riding along like Peter Pan's lost boy, balancing my treasured sword first this way, balancing it further along, yet another.

All I could see was rescuing this child's dream. It was as if, had I left this sword to simply fade away, the dream also, would die with it. And who can say, we can't rescue the wonder of childhood this way? And who can know for certain, to fight as a brave knight, isn't somehow this child's destiny? Perhaps, in some future and modern construct, this child-knight will be commissioned to fight a great and fearsome battle. And so much heart…so much spirit invested in even child's play rings with truth the clarion call of a journey's purpose.

Maybe this fledgling hero will brave new frontiers in medicine or physics? Maybe she will be a great visionary, inspiring sweeping social change and peace? Whatever the dragon be, I will cherish the latent vision like some otherworldly benefactress…and in this way grant the tender-budding child's heart the nobility of honouring its truth. And even as she grows becoming, may her journey - and all heroes like her - be marked with wisdom, grace, and strength.

le bon mot du jour: because the Universe has more breath than we do.

moine shaolin by isabel munoz

was reading by my familiar midnight light, "The Spiritual Practices of the Ninja" by Ross Heaven, and stumbled onto this expression of a universal truth that keeps coming before me. it's like the words ring true in my spirit, and still...i keep receiving the message until i can live the embodiment of their reality. for the ninja, a loss of meaning was one form of kuro [or suffering], and facing his shadow in an acceptance of this soul fatigue was essential to overcoming it and entering into a time of major breakthrough and life change.

When you are hopeless, give up hope.

When you are humilated, let go of pride and choose humility.

When you are disillusioned, de-illusion.

When you are holding on to what you know, let go and

surrender to what is about to become.

- Dina Glouberman-

le bon mot du jour.

[me] via text to biggity smalls:

"The ache is how we know we have a heart."

feel as though you’ve lost everything? [or sacrifice comes full circle to sanctification]...

In many religions sacrifice is the most effective way of invoking the Divine.
In early societies it was symbolized in the killing of an animal or the pouring out of a precious liquid. Today we might feel the sting of sacrifice in personal decision-making or strokes of fate. In all these cases sacrifice is an emptying out of personal will so that the spirit can have a greater presence. In everyday life certain losses and surrenders may signal an opening of the self that serves the purpose of sacrifice in the religious sense.

It is possible to stumble across the sacred already in existence, as in an old moss-covered oak in the thick of a virgin wood or in a hoary statue of the Buddha hat has been resting in an ancient temple for centuries. But sometimes the sacred has to be brought into being through art and effort.

"The Glen" by Maxfield Parrish

In ancient times people sacrificed an animal, placing their prized possession and important food in the hands of divinity rather than using it for themselves. They gave up something they cherished to make room for the holy.

Life gives us plenty of opportunities to make sacrifices. Getting a divorce or changing jobs may entail the kind of sacrifice that increases the holiness of one's life depending on how we deal with it. Sacrifice and sanctifying are natural processes available in every life.

Today it easy to dismiss the importance of sacrifice. We may consider only the giving-up part and not the sanctifying element. The very idea of sacrifice may seem anachronistic. Only primitive people kill animals in the name of their gods. Or the idea of sacrifice may go against all that seems reasonable in a secular world. Why give up the very things one has worked for and achieved? What good is an attitude of self-denial? These sentiments are full of worldly wisdom, but they overlook the profound insight of religion:

The giving up of ego transforms the person radically, placing him in a much vaster notion of what it means to be a human being. It puts him in touch with the incomprehensible mysteries that shape life regardless of our awareness and appreciation of them.
A modern person may find it difficult to imagine living from a place other than ego. Secularism and ego go together, and it may seem only prudent to do whatever is possible to be a conscious, evolving, and successful individual. But the religions teach a different set of values with a focus on eternal concerns and radical community.

They promote a different notion of self—if the word self is appropriate at all. They suggest that a person might feel profoundly fulfilled by being a receptor of life rather than a doer and achiever, a conduit of power rather than the originator.

When in the past people killed their precious livestock for the sake of religion, they were doing something both symbolic and literal. The animal represented what they considered valuable, and they were willing to give it up for a divine blessing. Giving over what they most prized, they felt a great loss. If sacrifice is a mere formality, it simply doesn't work because the emotional sting indicates a letting go of something felt as precious.

Every sacrifice
transforms the person
in a
small way,
and bit by bit
life becomes
holy.


By allowing a greater will to have a role, the person is deliteralized, made into something less centripetal. Even the mystic, so interiorly absorbed, looks beyond the self for meaning. Sacrifice chips away at the self, allowing the deep soul to take over.

The need to insist on our own existence gives way to a more relaxed appreciation of the life passing through us, achieving its own ends, which, mysteriously, creates a fuller version of self than what we might have created from our own designs.


- excerpted from In Every Sacrifice, God is Born
from "The Soul's Religion" by Thomas Moore -

je vais porter les graines de moutarde du naufragé.

In Another Year of Fewer Disappointments

The minor angel mops his brow and laughs
his miraculous laugh, ringing with sorrow.
His face—if this is his face—this mask
of wrecked grace says, Sit with me.
Come sit with me for a while.
Ah, to be as wise as he is—

but we can't know what suffering will cost us.
It could cost the very self that longed for it,
that winked at its specter, lurking,
blueing the sky. In the wake of its coming,
the small boat of our souls—
where we imagined we'd ride out the gale
in high style—has splintered and sunk,
one gunwale washed onto the beach
for the jittery, pea-brained seagulls to perch on
and spatter. What does that matter,
the angel asks. One rib made the world once.


Eliza Griswold

wood engraving "The End" by Rockwell Kent

in your hand. the birth of a new day...or a childhood myth revisited.

sometimes we happen upon the fortune
of waking from
the deadened sleep of adulthood
and
tripping through some portal,we stumble without veiled vision
into the realm of childhood,able once again to
see things with the same magick
that came so easily before
we became numb from hungering only for
the songs of experience
[tempered without innocence - all they can do is leave us jaded]

But again,
now/here
we are
and given respite for awhile
[perhaps after having been driven there by some dark and tremulous storm]
we cast our eyes
into that silvery liquid pool
of memory
chancing to reflect upon our journey
and drawing strength from our own myths.

and so…here it was I recently found myself
considering the tomes of my youth
and offer up to you
like Lewis’ soundless wardrobe
a wondering path home




I considered Bastian’s journey.
Remember that quiet, bright boy?whose childhood crime was one of
wishing for wisdom:
he preferred to spend his days whiling his way
through ancient novels
rather than pursue the rowdy, barbaric bruises of youth
and suffered for it, by bearing the endless torment of bullies.



and then he fell into the Neverending Story…

whose leaves of pages called him to
the mountains and trees
of Fantasia
Causing him, in desperate act, to steal away
and read with shallow breaths the
Hero’s Journey of Atreyu

and with that boy warrior of the Plains people we
confronted
[perhaps for the first time, many of us]
the despondency of despair

oh shed even now a tear, for Artax,
whose spirit gave up
in that dark and murky swamp
only then, remember, was it
that he sunk
[all his hope was lost]
and he died

and still, the Hero journeyed on
though weary
he bore the mark of the Auryn
[it’s labyrinthine significant of the quest]
and understood the sacred call of duty
[he knew any personal sacrifice he must bear was for the good of us all]

again, Great Wisdom
for it is true
we know for certain now:
- we are all interconnected -
and whatever breaks my heart
like ripples

affect

and breaks the heart of Hope and Love



and this is why we journey on
[it is our sacred duty]
Toward wholeness in ourselves,
We heal the Heart of the world.



But still, Fantasia, was doomed
And being consumed by The Nothing,
Atreyu must journey on…

through many hardships and much suffering
unwittingly, he was pursued
all the way by the Servant of Darkness
that would snatch the life breath from him should he stop



he traveled all the way to face his fears
[and through the riddle of the Sphinx]
On his way to the Oracle
he made his way past the questions
we don’t even know need asked

and then, having reached the end
of whatever path he knew he must take,
he reached also
the end of himself
and the Nothing raged on
[vapid dark star of apathy and despair]
devouring Fantasia
[the dream world of all human beings]
eating away at all the goals
and hope for progress of humanity

and it is there at the edge of the precipice
that Atreyu faces the ultimate test:
even after slaying – with warrior skill— the Gmork that sought to destroy him
[overcoming all that would stop him]
he reaches the point where all that is left for him to do is
-to give up-

Surrender

-let go-
Again, the ultimate test



There is nothing more he can do
But acknowledge
His fate resides within the strength of Another



And Dear Reader,
do know
it’s not a place of weakness to admit:
to discover this selfsame truth in the realm of your own journey -
- it is always what seems contrary to rational thought
that reaps real wisdom
and
All Spiritual Truth

Enter Bastian:
the small boy who
has made a lifetime at his young age of
thinking he, insignificant,
reveling in the bold, brave acts of others.

[so too we/here can seem at times so incapable of any good
we could ever hope to achieve]

and the revelation dawns
even as he is reading…
…that he cannot separate himself from the story
even as the life of Atreyu [the warrior]
And the Princess [lifeblood of Fantasia]
Hang in the balance, so too
Does Bastian’s World
[because Fantasia is the dream world of humans, and because thoughts and dreams by their very nature have no boundaries]
so too,
and it is true,
neither does Fantasia,

but the reality is
– and soon we each learn in our own ways –
that the Nothing is real
and exists to snuff out the boundless worlds within us
should we, either for disbelief
or lack of desire for trying any longer
give up and give in to the darkness that would consume us

and in his awareness, so too
Bastian is pushed to the edge
beyond the limitations of skepticism
he is called to leave the rational boundaries of thought behind
to enter the Dream World
[that is indeed, undone]
and in that that moment, the supreme irony resounds
trading innocence for experience
yet wanting Goodness and Light to reign
the child confronts his own dark self
and learns to move toward maturity
in a world shaped by the power of his dreams and wishes
[which as we know is the ever unmarred, unfailing strength of childhood]

only he can give the Princess her new name all it requires is that he
- believe -
regardless of how it seems that
all is lost
[Fantasia was reduced after all to a single seed, that golden grain of sand]





[and please, Brave Heart, take note:]
It is never too late
to begin the world over again.




Again, all we have is now/here

Selah.
Or in other words:
Let it be.

- zenjen -